Alice hesitates, clearly feeling torn, maybe even guilty for telling me. “He’s not in a good way at all.” She glances at her watch. “I have to get to my next job. But if you need me to stay a little longer?—”
“No.” I squeeze her arm. “It’s okay. You can go. Thanks again.”
She nods and shifts the bin bag from one hand to the other but doesn’t make a move to leave.
“Is everything else all right, Alice?” Is there more she has not told me?
“I…I was just wondering about, you know, the funeral. I’m not exactly sure when it is. Judy told me there are changes and she wanted to get back to me. But since she is at the camp and Mr. Sutton is…” She doesn’t finish.
“It’s postponed,” I say quickly. “We’ll let you know the new date.”
Alice has been working for the Suttons for so long that they pretty much consider her as part of the family. So, of course, she was invited.
Relief softens her face. “I’ll stop by tomorrow with groceries.”
“Thank you, Alice. Have a good day.”
She nods and finally walks toward the elevator.
I find Gabriel slumped on the balcony with a bottle of whiskey on the glass table in front of him and a tumbler hanging loosely from his fingers.
He looks drunk, all right. But the bottle is barely touched, the glass too.
It doesn’t make sense.
His body is sagging forward, head bowed, shoulders collapsed inward like he’s given up fighting gravity. In his other hand he’s holding a manila envelope, identical to the one he got from his PI last time.
My heart sinks. Whatever the PI told him must have been devastating.
Is that why Gabriel was not answering my calls?
What if the detective found out something awful about Sadie? From what I can see, Gabriel is not drunk but stuck in a state of shock.
“Gabriel?” My fingertips graze his shoulder.
“Huh?” He raises his head a few inches. The whites of his eyes are webbed with red, and his pupils struggle to focus on my face.
“What did the PI find out?” I nod toward the envelope, which is almost slipping between his fingers.
“Noth—” His voice catches. “Nothing important.”
“I don’t believe you.” I snatch the envelope. He tries to reach for it, but his arm rises too late, too slow.
“Don’t,” he says, his voice hoarse. He attempts to stand but sways and collapses back into the chair, reaching for his glassinstead. He takes just a sip and grimaces as though it burned him.
Before he can try to stop me, I head back into the apartment, sink onto the couch and slide my fingers inside the envelope. They emerge with a yellowed newspaper clipping and a photograph.
Gabriel as a teenager, grinning beside another boy I don’t recognize.
What is this about?
I glance at the headline.
local teen dies in tragic fall
My eyes race through the article. The air rushes from my lungs in a whoosh and the paper starts to tremble in my grip.
I pull out the remaining contents of the envelope and my eyes land on a photo of Judy as a teenager, wearing a blue and white striped dress and two braids. I turn the photo over and read the words on the back.
